Over the past few months, high school seniors across the nation have stressed and panicked over the greatest question they have ever been asked: what college are you going to? Almost as many are asking themselves the second greatest question: how am I going to get in? Students fill out applications, write essays, take harder classes, and squeeze every little detail about their fascinating lives onto a sheet of paper to provide the notion of having a “well rounded high school career.” WSPN has asked various seniors what they are doing differently to get into college.

Anthony Bradford, a senior at Wayland, has developed a foolproof system. “If I really like a university, usually I’ll stalk their Dean of Students for a few days before I go to the open house , ” Bradford told us. Bradford will follow the Dean to coffee shops, bookstores, the dry cleaners, and all the way home, accumulating information that he would able to use in conversation. On the day of the open house, Bradford will carefully stage a loud conversation within earshot of the Dean, and “more than ninety percent of the time he’ll come over and we’ll hit it right off,” he calculates.

Bradford claims he won over one Dean by announcing that his favorite baseball player was the back-up Kansas City Royals’ shortstop Luis Hernandez. “I saw him buy a poster of him at Walmart the day before,” Bradford admitted sheepishly. The Dean sidled over and began a conversation about baseball. When Bradford pulled out Hernandez’ signed rookie card from his pocket and gave it to the Dean as a gift, the Dean wept with joy and swore an oath to ensure Bradford’s acceptance in the university.

Senior Janet Willard claims that her strategy will enable her to secure a spot in any school in the world. “I’ve memorized 19 school anthems,” Willard proudly told us. “I know the tunes, the lyrics, even the dates they were written!” So far, Willard has attended seventeen open houses. “What I do,” she elaborated, “is casually walk by the College president wherever I am, humming that particular school anthem. Sometimes I’ll even sing it under my breath! Anyways, at thirteen of the seventeen open houses that I’ve attended, I’ve been stopped and asked how I know the song!”

Willard generally responds to their questions by saying that she had dreamed of attending their school ever since she was a tiny girl, and had obsessively learned everything there was to know about it. She even lets it slip that the school song is on her top ten “Most Played Songs” on her iPod. “Janet has twelve interviews and one guaranteed acceptance, thanks to her knowing those anthems!” her mother, Mrs. Willard, told us. “She’s such a bright girl.”

Franklin Pelham, who will graduate this year, has taken a more desperate approach towards winning the hearts of those with influence. “Last Saturday, I had my cousin put on a mask and steal the purse off this lady who I knew worked in admissions at my top school. Anyway, we had it all planned out—he snatched the purse and I chased him down the street and caught him and we pretended to fight, and then he dropped the purse and ran. I staggered back to the lady with a little fake blood trickling down my cheek, and I returned the purse—she was so happy, she cried!”

Franklin proceeded to walk her home, and as he told her the story of his life, mentioned his top choice school. “Her face lit up so bad I thought I’d go blind,” remembers Franklin. “She told me she worked there and would get me in if it was the last thing she ever did! I gave her my name and number and everything, and just yesterday I got a call. I’m in!”

Yet another strategy, which senior Jessica Pollock, a D-student, claims to use on every application she’s ever filled out, is the “make stuff up” technique. “I wrote about how I’ve climbed Mount Everest every year since I was four, for one college essay,” she bragged. “My other one was about Barack Obama being my father.” According to her Common Application, she scored a 2410 on the SAT. When we asked her if she was worried about being found out, Pollock stared back blankly. “How would they ever find out?”

While taking the SAT nine times, along with maintaining A’s and B’s may indeed help your chances of getting into college, “taking the original approaches towards securing a spot in the college you want shows creativity and originality,” believes Mrs. Willard. “Anyone can get good grades,” argues Bradford. “But I can win hearts.”

The Farcicals is WSPN’s weekly humor blog, written alternately by seniors Sam Bagel and Gifford Delle.